ill make his attempt. But
while this is probably true of life in general, it is notably true of
warfare. The state which in war relies simply upon defending itself,
instead of upon hurting the enemy, is bound to incur disaster, and for
the very simple reason that the party which proposes to strike a blow
has but one thing to do; whereas he who proposes only to ward off
blows has a dozen things, for he cannot know upon which interest, of a
dozen that he may have, the coming blow may fall. For this reason,
again, a "navy for defence only" is a wholly misleading phrase, unless
defence be construed to include _all_ national interests, and not only
the national territory; and further, unless it be understood that the
best defence of one's own interests is power to injure those of the
enemy.

In the summary of points to be dealt with has been included the
opinion that offensive action by a navy may be limited to merely
preying upon the enemy's commerce--that being considered not only a
real injury, but one great enough to bring him to peace. Concerning
this, it will suffice here to say that national maritime commerce does
not consist in a number of ships sprinkled, as by a pepper-pot, over
the surface of the ocean. Rightly viewed, it constitutes a great
system, with the strength and weakness of such. Its strength is that
possessed by all organized power, namely, that it can undergo a good
deal of local injury, such as scattered cruisers may inflict, causing
inconvenience and suffering, without receiving vital harm. A strong
man cannot be made to quit his work by sticking pins in him, or by
bruising his shins or blacking his eyes; he must be hit in a vital
part, or have a bone broken, to be laid up. The weaknesses of
commerce--the fatally vulnerable parts of its system--are the
commercial routes over which ships pass. They are the bones, the
skeleton, the framework of the organism. Hold them, break them, and
commerce falls with a crash, even though no ship is taken, but all
locked up in safe ports. But to effect this is not the work of
dispersed cruisers picking up ships here and there, as birds pick up
crumbs, but of vessels massed into powerful fleets, holding the sea,
or at the least making the highways too dangerous for use. A navy so
planned is for defence indeed, in the true sense that the best defence
is to crush your enemy by depriving him of the use of the sea.

We now come to the assertion that if the United States